


Meltwater

by llassah



Category: Margeret Atwood- Shapechangers in Winter
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 18:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llassah/pseuds/llassah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is based on the beautiful poem Shapechangers in Winter, with apologies to Margaret Atwood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meltwater

**Author's Note:**

  * For [recycledstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/recycledstars/gifts).



A creek. The water flows over pebbles, larger stones, crisp and cold with meltwater as the sun’s pale fingers ghost across the land, no rough music of summer just the timid grey unfolding of light. What snow there was has melted, from pure white to dirt to the brown of mud laid bare. I am here, scraped knees and hair in braids, dressed in wool, red-nosed steam-breathed, waiting for fish, or a bear, even an adventurous cat. You are what I find, with your single glove and torn jeans, laughing as you run wild and your shouts disrupt the wood, and a bright flash of feeling shoots through me. I hate you, I think; I cannot be sure but whatever it is makes me look away from the water at you, at your freckles, your flushed cheeks and the lick of hair that never goes down, even now. I bend down for a stone to throw and come up twenty years later and look at your stiff back and your straight mouth, and words choke me because your face will always be a challenge.

Our eyes meet at chapel. I can feel my face flush. Later, my lips curve up and my eyelashes drop. Later, we walk together, slowly, with flowers you picked for me tucked into my hair, already a halo springing from my plaits.

We run through woods again, but the world is newer and the danger is closer. We tumble down slopes, surge through woods and across rivers, sometimes yelling, sometimes listening, our panting breaths loud in each other’s ears. We lie together: we fuck in the dappled sunlight tasting salt on skin, sweat and musk mingling with the rotting leaves on the ground. We have no fear of death, because we do not know it. All we know are our small deaths, bitten into each other’s shoulders and sobbed out when we have no need for quiet. We walk together through the forest, uncertain of where we are with no fixed point to return to. We would sing if we knew the words.

Then it is winter in another age, and we are cold. The wolves howl outside and the wind rips through the trees and we must survive the winter but only if we pray, only if we breathe together, still and close under furs as the fire burns and mustn’t go out because it is all that keeps us from the ice. We will live, you and I, we will love each other under the furs because we are _alive_ , but it hurts like a hell we do not yet know, because being innocent is not being free of fear, it is not knowing what to name it. We invent gods and demons, you and I, because the snow covers everything and the wolves howl and wait for us outside, and all we have are furs and a fire. All I have is you.

Earlier still, and we are shifting forms, still together in the flickering flames, in the twist of roots and the clash of antlers. We are fish, then otters, then ice, leaves, trees, moon and sun, I am vixen, lioness, bear. It’s still you.

The paint is peeling on the window frame and there is grime on the glass. I am in college, you have a guitar which won’t stay in tune and we smoke rollups and fuck on a bare mattress because we don’t know what else to do. You are fishbelly pale, acne scars on your back and tender dimpled hollows on your knees. I love you between cups of coffee and cigarettes, when the leaves rot then freeze on the ground, when I watch ice form on the windows and my fingers are red raw from the cold. I love you when I lie in bed looking at the damp patch on the ceiling that’s the shape of Nova Scotia, when my mind drifts after we’ve argued, fucked, made up and made love. I wonder sometimes if I love you because I don’t know how else to feel about you. We marry quietly and our lives change rhythm.

Midnight, and the harsh lights flicker in the hospital. I scream and cling to you with all my strength as new life is torn from me. I want to give birth barely rising from a deep sleep, in a den I have built, my belly full enough to last the winter through, but the striplights hurt my eyes and everything is bright and sharp. I die a hundred times and wake up to your face, and a little scrap of life that we made, you and I. I know with reasonable certainty where she was conceived, and when, although I don’t know why.

We are in a rough hut, and I give birth by oil lamp. I die in blood and fear, with the wolves howling, twisted on the floor.

We are in a cottage, and it is too soon; I drink some bitter herbs and my stomach cramps until there are knives through my belly and we never talk about it.

We are in—

We are.

And then, after the three children, and the school plays, the fights and tears, the discarded tricycles and the thrown-away instructions, the piano and the metronome, it is us, and a house settling down for the night. It is quiet save for your breathing, which I listen to as if it is going to stop in a few seconds. I want to wake you up. I never quite shake the urge to call your name, to bring you from sleep into the present, here, with me. I close my eyes and fly out of the window as the curtain flutters in the breeze. You are here with me still, in your pyjamas with the hole in the right knee (imperfectly, though lovingly, mended, glasses off so I can see close up, squinting at the fabric an inch away from my nose as you read to me) as I go over rooftops and high, higher, to the stars and beyond them, to the edge of a universe that ends in a curve. We look, and we hold hands as we look, then we leave, walking back to our creaking shifting house in the middle of it all, singing as we go.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, L, for the wonderful beta.


End file.
